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Boeing inspecting 787s, plans to slow production in September

Boeing’s third 787 Dreamliner, the fourth to fly, takes off on its first flight from Everett’s Paine Field on Sunday, March 14, 2010. (Boeing)

Boeing is holding up flights of two flight-test 787 Dreamliners to check for a horizontal stabilizer issue, but may fly the planes again before fixing problems, company officials said Friday.

Also Friday, the company disclosed that customer reshuffling of 787 deliveries has created some extra time the company will use to delay some airplane component deliveries and improve the production process.

Boeing acknowledged Thursday that it had suspended flights of its second and third 787s to inspect the horizontal stabilizers for a workmanship issue from Italian manufacturing partner Alenia. The other three flight-test aircraft already are in planned layups.

“We made the decision to prioritize some inspections of the horizontal stabilizers before flying airplanes two and three as we found out more information during the day (Thursday) on the issue,” Scott Fancher, vice president and general manager of the 787 program, said in a conference call Friday. “This is not a design issue or a flight-test finding. This is a straightforward workmanship issue with the installation of a couple of shims and some associated fasteners.”

Specifically, the issue involves one shim on either side airplane and the 24 fasteners that attach them.

“We were seeing some gaps with the installation (of the shims) that were larger than the design allowables,” Fancher said. “Literally during the day yesterday we began getting information associated with some of the fasteners that go through these shims as part of the installation and the torquing of those fasteners.”

Fancher did not disclose how many planes had been found to have the issue so far or whether any of those were flight-test aircraft, saying: “Some have the issue some don’t.”

The inspections, which take a day or two, started Friday on the second and third 787s, Fancher said. “We want to do the inspections to understand where we’re at with the build of those airplanes and then we’ll make the decision” what to do.

Pressed on whether 787s might fly with the issue uncorrected, Boeing spokesman Jim Proulx said: “We have a temporary operating limitation that says we can do that, but we won’t decide whether we will do so until the inspections are complete.”

The fix will take up to eight days per aircraft but is not expected to prevent Boeing from fulfilling its plan of delivering the first 787 to launch customer All Nippon Airways by the end of the year, Fancher said. He said other work on the 787s in layup and even ground testing can continue on airplanes concurrent with the fix.

“Will I have to resequence some flight-test activities because of that? Yeah, probably,” Fancher said. “We think that’s entirely manageable given our schedules and our status.”

The program still has schedule margin available, he added.

In all, Boeing must inspect 25 sets of horizontal stabilizers – some already on aircraft, some not, Fancher said.

Asked how the issue slipped through Boeing’s system as far as it did, Fancher said: “That aspect is still under investigation.”

This is not the first issue with 787 components from Alenia. Issues at another supplier – Vought Aircraft Industries’ South Carolina plant – led Boeing to buy the plant.

But Fancher expressed confidence in Alenia, saying: “Alenia’s a partner of ours on the 787 and a very capable partner. Whenever you start up a new production system you’re always going to run into start-up quality issues.”

As for the plan to delay shipping of 787 components in September, Fancher said customer shuffling of deliveries created opportunities to “further strengthen our production system health” because it creates extra time in the production process.

Generally, airplane makers can move deliveries around without slowing production. Asked why this is different, Fancher said: “Because these are associated with fairly early deliveries, we can’t always do substitutions. It depends on the configuration of the customer, what engines they have, the whole nine yards.”

Boeing will not go into specifics about how it plans to redistribute the work flow, Fancher said. “Whenever we do these things we really look at where quality productivity or condition assembly hot spots may occur and assess whether a little bit of extra time may be useful. … Everybody will continue to build, though.”

The company decided on the move last week and started informing production partners Friday, Fancher said. The move is similar to the company’s April decision to suspend shipments of 787 Dreamliner sections to its Everett widebody plant to allow suppliers time to catch up.

Asked if the new move was delaying any airplane deliveries not at the request of customers, Fancher said: “I don’t think we’re going to be disappointing anybody with the deliveries, but there are always subtleties that we have to work out with our customers associated with specific sequencing.”

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.